Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The Cinematography of 'Red Hook Summer'

One of the things I was amazed at in the newest Spike Lee Joint Red Hook Summer was the cinematography.

Poster for Red Hook Summer

Red Hook Summer is a film written and directed by Spike Lee, his sixth in the "Chronicles of Brooklyn" series following She's Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Crooklyn, Clockers and He Got Game. The film was released on August 10, 2012 in the select theatres of the New York City area and was released in other parts of the northeast United States on August 24, 2012. —Wikipedia

Spike said in The Hollywood Reporter "I'd just bought this Sony camera, an F3, and I said, "We've got the means and ways and have to make do. "

SONY F3 CAMERA

I don't what know type of lens he used (it's all about the lens yo), but the film really looked good! Well the lighting also plays a part in making a film look good as well.

To that end I want to *APPLAUD* the all around great cinematography by Kerwin DeVonish (pictured below) in REAL locations!

Kerwin DeVonish

Like many low budget films, everything in Red Hook Summer was shot on location and DeVonish did an awesome job of lighting up and shooting in those locations especially the small church and Red Hook projects apartment the main character lived in. Stills from some of those scenes pictured below.

As a filmmaker I'm always fascinated by the technique of films. I'm even fascinated by the cameras as indicated by my post about the Olympics DiveCam. LOL.

Besides wanting to see this Spike Lee film, excuse me "Joint", I've been reading about for over a year, I wanted to see how the film would LOOK on such a low budget and this camera Spike bought to shoot it with.

Seth Shire of the blog Unpaid Film Critic said “Red Hook Summer” has been nicely photographed by cinematographer Kerwin DeVonish. The movie has been digitally photographed and has an eye popping color palette." I couldn't agree more.

The colors in Red Hook Summer POPPED. The cinematographer is responsible for creating this look through lighting and lenses. Again DeVonish did a great job doing this. Those apartment scenes and the church scenes were very small locations that didn't look like it allowed enough room to rig lights, but DeVonish did it—to great effect.

ADDITIONAL

You can read more about the Sony F3 camera by clicking the picture below